Leica unveils D-Lux 6 Silver Edition

Just in time for the holiday season, Leica has announced a 'Silver Edition' of its D-Lux 6 premium compact camera, with a high-gloss black body and silver lens barrel. The camera also gets a new accessory: the Leica Soft Pouch in lambskin nappa leather, which the company says features a 'fascinating wrap-around design'. The camera is otherwise the same as the standard D-Lux 6 (and by extension, very similar to the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX7).

LEICA D-LUX 6 Silver Edition

The classic compact Leica Camera reimagined with a high-gloss and silver finish

Solms, Germany (October 24, 2013) - Leica Camera AG, presents a new design twist on the Leica D-Lux 6 digital compact camera. With an existing version in elegant, matte-black, the camera is now available in a high-gloss, two-color finish. The new high-gloss black camera body paired with the silver-colored lens creates a tasteful contrast that results in a sophisticated, stylish appearance.

The silver lens of the Leica D-Lux 6 is a Leica DC-Vario-Summilux lens. The varied range of focal lengths makes the camera particularly versatile, ideal for everything from wide-angle architectural and landscape photography to photojournalism and portraits. Combined with a powerful 1/1.7” CMOS image sensor, this camera guarantees a high dynamic range and brilliant images that capture life’s greatest moments.

The Leica D-Lux 6 offers a comprehensive range of features, including automatic mode, manual setting options and optional accessories, like an electronic viewfinder with 1.4 million pixels, which provide even greater creative freedom in all areas of photography. Full HD video recording capability is also included in this newest version of the D-Lux 6. The camera records a perfect rendition of fast-moving subjects in outstanding detail. Video data can be saved in Internet-compatible MP4 format and can be uploaded directly to social media or mobile devices without any need for conversion. Crystal-clear sound recording is guaranteed by special wind-noise filter that reduces undesirable noise.

Both versions of the Leica D-Lux 6 are available from Leica dealers. A new addition to the range of accessories for the Leica D-Lux 6 is the Leica Soft Pouch in lambskin nappa leather: black, stylish and with a fascinating wrap-around design, this leather case is a perfect complement to any outfit.

The fatal flaw in this concept by Leica is that the camera looks better with the black lens - in silver it looks ungainly. The "Edition G-STAR RAW" in fact does look like a special edition but its flaw is the $4-500 surcharge, just for cosmetics that could have been there in the first place.

The Ricoh GR limited edition, by contrast, costs only $100 more than the standard model - and actually is actually cheaper if you factor in the value of the included case and lens hood. Takes good pix, too!

Not sure if "jewelry camera" announcements really belong here. They hardly contain information actually relevant to photography and generate a lot of negative responses. And, of course, their value in terms of advertisement is, at the very least, not obvious given the target audience.

For the money, why not a solid silver body ... actually, for durability, 93% silver, 7% copper, like the old US silver dollars. Silver's only $21 per ounce these days, wouldn't exactly be a cost problem.

Then, you could add value by having famous firearms silersmiths make classic silver etchings and carvings... deer, ducks, all that hunting stuff.

And since it's a camera, Leica could sell special silver-toned paper, just to ice the cake.

This wouldn't have seemed so silly if the LX7 hadn't come out around 18 months ago and hit a street price around half of this version's MSRP. Seems a bit late in the life cycle for special editions.

That said, a lot of the comments are over the top IMO. It's not a bad camera, just a little long-in-the-tooth. And this is far from Leica spiralling Hassy-style. Leica has been rebadging since at least the 90s (or was it 80s?) and has always kept making "real" Leicas while selling the rebadged models, which presumably are good moneymakers or they wouldn't do it. I'd say a lot of people are a little too fond of a good old fashioned pile-on.

In China, this makes great gift for a manager or party leader who has no idea and does not care how good/bad it is as long as it has a luxury brand logo. L or H's management understand this and they know such products have nothing to do with photography. People who buy this want no part in good picture taking. Therefore, this is a very logical product.

If I was to apply logic to this camera purely based on price and the types of people who'd even consider buying one then I draw the following conclusions:

1) These people would buy a Suzuki over a Honda for the same price.2) These people would buy a Casio over a Seiko for the same price.3) These people will consider the Leica to be much better than the Nikon D7000 or RX100 II4) Even if the Sony A7R was reduced to the same price as this Leica, the people who this camera is intended for will preference the Leica simply because it is a Leica.5) When I look into the toilet bowl my floating turd is actually much more valuable than what I think it is if only I knew how to market it properly.

Years ago I bought DLux3, I didn't keep it long as it gave a horrid purple hue to images and was as Slippy as a bar of soap. To see pretty much the same look all these years later well it looks really ancient, who would buy it now given great choices like Ricoh GR or whatever. Red Spot no longer enough reason to buy.

These rebranded Panasonics seem to be selling remarkably well here in Germany. I personally know several - otherwise quite sensible - people of normal income who bought such cameras telling me with utter conviction that Leica did add something - other than the red badge - to the product. If it makes them happy. (I am still waiting for my Leica smartphone - a rebadged HTC?)

Since thousands of years, people venerate and pray to something they even ignore all about, nor do they what it is, or could be, they pay for it and for those who represent this unknown being or thing, and those laugh and live like kings on the fool's expense, those fools who listen to their stories and get enslaved by them. That "thing" is called GOD.

Now, here we see something we can get without a lambleather pouch, and without a red dot for much cheaper. But since the red dot, is a religion and those who are brainwashed by it will never accpet any critics, why should we criticize or interfer in this business. The world, same as the universe, is based on duality. Fools and Magicians, the first have empty heads, the second use all their magick to keep those heads empty. That is how the brave new world works. It has since ever worked that way, and it will continue to work that way.

On the end, is there not something different on it? like Nikon's special Sony sensors, who knows?

Leica know something but the enthusiast and the pro's don't? It may be that Leica don't make these cameras for photographers instead they make them for the richest 3% which we have no idea about where they live or what they do. I can't imagine any hard working middle class going for it. Errm there is the third possibility too; Leica are trying to bankrupt "elegantly" for tax reasons.

Richest 3% tend not to be so stupid to buy this stuff. Maybe the richest 0.1% who got the riches through a chance of winning a lottery, inheriting the money or being a tiny little better than the next guy at playing some popular sport.

You seem to have talked to them so share your wisdom with us. Richness in material simply comes with the material value/price of what you do. And material richness of all kinds require material poorness of others including basic needs.

When I first saw this I literally laughed out loud, now I'm beginning to feel sad that we are witnessing the last desperate death throes of a once great camera manufacturer, driven to the brink by superior competitors and a management team who have pulled the same tricks a few too many times.

Surely there aren't enough gullible people around to make any kind of success of this for Leica?

The S2 medium format system was actually made possible by cameras like this one. I believe they tried the purist approach which you are advocating before - that ended with their current funder bailing them out. They have since found good ways to make money.

Meanwhile, you can still buy M system gear just like before, so why complain?

leica is destroying its brand with this strategy, and by extension so is hasselblad. verbatim cloning another product. this is indicative of a firm that has milked its brand for too long without investing in its future.

Hasselblad is obviously toast, but Leica seems to combine these tacky branding exercises with sensible, forward-looking, innovative investments in the M and S systems. It’s hard to understand this.

The only explanation I can think of is that these rebranded Panasonics sell much, much better than they should or than we imagine, presumably to an entirely different set of people than the real Leicas. Maybe bored businesspeople in airports or something?

My pouch came with a card in German that said the lamb was named Snowball, and the photo (very clear with good composition) showed Snowball on an idyllic farm in Switzerland with a little girl with braids. At the bottom the three check boxes were: 1. Roasted with mint jelly. 2. Grilled Mediterranean and 3. Shepard's Pie. My pouch was check #3, but I have heard the pouches checked #1 are already the most valued by Leica collectors.

Fascinating incredible design, with this awesome large red dot in front, and a wonderful soft pouch, probably the most interesting pocket camera launch of this century (if we except all other Leica special series or Hasselblad rebranded gears naturally).

I am thinking about selling my X100s that is just a camera, to buy one of these Leica D-Lux 6 Silver Edition, that is much more than a simple camera, but a tribute to centuries of photography and an iconic object that deserve to be exposed on a photo gallery among the bests photos of the world.

Thanks Leica to give us this marvel, this photography icon, where the black of the body answer to the white silver of the lens to reimaginate how pure black & white defined photography for most of its history.

Thanks again to give us cameras that do more than shooting: they show!

Seems a bit odd that the outer barrel of the lens is so large (thick rimmed and thick in depth) for a compact camera. Looks really disproportionate compared to the tiny lens. Almost as big as the new pancake zoom for the GM1.

It's no M43, but it does have a 1/1.7" sensor, with a super-bright f/1.4-2.3 aperture, both unheard-of in most other compacts.I love my LX-7... and am as baffled by Leica's overpriced rebranded editions as everyone else here :).

The outer barrel houses control wheel for aperture changes and the great physical format switch (the sensor is multiformat). The GM1 12-32 kit is the minimal diameter which still makes sense - exactly the outer diameter of m43 mount (which protrudes from GM1 BTW, so diameter of the lens any smaller would not cover the mount or create a step somewhere - and on a lens this small there is not space for step, barely space for zoom ring).